Organic Lead Generation in Nashville

How much traffic do you expect from the search engines (i.e., Google)? Are you getting an equal amount of traffic as your competitors or expect more? Are you aware that you augment your lead generation in Nashville from the search, Google Maps listings, and YouTube videos? Yes, it is feasible when you have the right approach. Regardless if you have experimented with the search channel optimization (SEO) before with no success, it does not mean that you have exhausted the search potential. A lot of consultants out there offer optimization services but is it real SEO? Paid advertising? Nothing to do with SEO. Any promotional way where the marketer pushes some buttons is not close to SEO. On the other hand, 99% of the websites with the statement "SEO-ready" are not even close. Why, because developers have no proficiency in SEO and they built unacceptable sites, poorly compliant with the Google guidelines. I am saying here that there is a serious chance that your pages have already enough issues that block them from getting regular traffic. You need to fix all the problems and reclaim the traffic you deserve.

Hiring the Nashville SEO Expert to optimize your pages can be very favorable as you refrain from wasting money and time when working with unskilled marketers or running paid ads. If you exclude the technical issues, there might be still some problems with your strategy. I will need to check that your SEO strategy targets the right consumers. It is not my place to do the market survey for you as you will probably have the best niche insights. The key is how your ideas can help augmenting the SEO leads. As for every marketing channel, I will need to understand your niche, find the available sources, define the strategy, agree on the appropriate budget, and monitor the growth rate. Since the SEO campaign cannot run on unlimited resources, it must serve the business goals. Note that the organic channel comes with a high degree of specialization that only a few can master in our industry.

What your business needs are more views and clicks on search. A higher positioning of your pages will get the clicks. As the Nashville SEO Consultant, I intend on optimizing the key-topics and promote them where it makes sense for your business. The lead generation will take place on relevant blogs, and networks where the local people might want to click and visit your pages. I will then optimize the pages for conversions. An additional benefit will be the brand visibility emanating from the mentions in many online places and the corresponding reduction of competition. Consumers are likely willing to trust your brand when they see it everywhere. Overall, my focus will be clicks, conversions, content relevancy, high rankings, and brand visibility. I would expect the activities to break on all devices/search channels, i.e., desktop, mobile (phones/tablets), voice search, YouTube, Google Maps, etc.

How does SEO work?

The search engine channel contributes with free traffic from the search engines, i.e., Google, Bing. When mature, it becomes "evergreen" (uninterrupted). What I do when optimizing a page is making it more distinguishable to the local consumers (Nashville), when running a search query, browse the Google maps, watch YouTube videos, or visiting any other network. I start by researching what the customers need, then prepare the content for the landing pages, monitor the stats and adjust if needed. The decisive point is to offer the best solution to the residents of Nashville. What better way to make your products/services more visible than to display the pages in the most prominent positions for Nashville queries?

After 12 years in project management, I got into Digital Marketing and SEO where I spent another ten years in-house and agency-wise. During this decade I have seen domains govern the search stack regardless of the niche, pages hit with penalties due to their over-optimized link profiles, others profiting from top-notch content. Does Black-hat SEO still work? Sure, but I like to do things differently as I believe in cornerstone content and strong site structure. Do the technical fixes and content optimization suffice to deliver growth? Yes sir, but SEO is more than the technicalities; You can work it up to the point you have a cheap, evergreen, targeted traffic source. It can yield more than paid advertising, cost less than spend massive on securing ad spots, return more hits than the ads, and offer uninterrupted traffic. SEO is the best channel in a marketing plan and can quickly produce a +50-200% increase in its initial phase.

What to expect?

You can expect industry lead generation metrics regardless if you have an established business or a Start-up. You can assume the SEO stats to be higher from the other digital channels. Best results we have with an in-house skilled marketing team, but the reality is that most businesses have no in-house teams or inadequate knowledge of how SEO works. Usually, internal teams attempt to grow the online business with paid advertising and social media. Traffic channels should not run on limitations and exhaust the marketing budget. Paid ads are expensive and deliver limited growth. When the strategy does not include more channels, you are only competing for a top paid spot, while social media is good for nothing. Most businesses strive to do anything in social as they fail to understand the channel. Do not take my word, just measure your stats and check what each channel delivers compared to the spending. Most teams work the same channels, and it gets over-complicated when all competitors show up in the same, few places. The problem arises from the limited understanding of the SEO channel. People "think" they work on it but in reality, the are using old and risky tactics that under-perform.

So, the question now is, why is it so hard to work the natural channel? SEO is too technical for everyday marketers and is not automated as they would prefer it to be. It is a fact that Google is the primary source of search traffic. To stay number one and offer the most relevant answers, Google continuously optimizes its engine. We call the engine updates as Google updates, algorithm updates, or search algorithm updates. Anyway, the updates are recurrent amounting to hundreds per year. The changes reflect the status of the search industry and what I mean by that is that marketers need to adjust their approach to each change before they see their traffic drop. The issue is that search optimization is not an automated software process, the changes do not show up on some dashboard like Adwords, there is no confirmation of an update rolled out, and no confidence on what the fix might be. The result is seeing old marketing tactics flagged as spam and websites facing the consequences (de-indexing, link profile over-optimization penalties, quality issues, rankings drop, etc.). Add the extent of hype embodied into the search business where agencies outsource their SEO clients to cheap providers. Again here, Google will gladly penalize the agencies and web pages they handle for not complying with its spam policy, which means no search traffic forever. How a White-hat SEO respond? Having simple tactics, following a spam-proof strategy, monitor the changes and adapt where needed. Most marketers will make things too complicated, will panic after each update, will not test beforehand, and gladly outsource to external agents. I like to do things differently, which is not running any risky stuff, not outsourcing, and complying with the policies.

As I said earlier, the updates pertain mostly to Google. Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and Yahoo!, have little progress to show historically. Allow me to say, though, that in the face of the many engine revisions, I do not detect large-scale alterations in the PageRank system. Yes, there is a lot of chatter about how the updates bring down businesses, but the central algorithm remains in place with some improvements. What I say is that the fundamental core of SEO has not changed much. Few upgrades, automated spam flags, no transparency, knowledge graph, other than that what is the change? Still, most SEO agencies would not follow even the minor trends in search. No change of tactics, eager to cut down costs by outsourcing business to off-shore workers. Why keep a provider who delivers low-level work or engages in search spam? When Google detects the spam will gladly disconnect the traffic and introduce another update to block more of us, SEOs. Google will not put up a mechanism to track who does spam and who stays white-hat. Google only sees patterns in the overview. If they detect that someone goes off the track, they pull up their spam checklist and hit them with an automatic penalty or run a manual audit. Whoever things that Google will not identify them they are wrong. Usually, unsophisticated marketers make the case and transfer the risk to the client. I like to stay on the safe side, by reading, monitoring, and testing things. Comply with the policies, focus on building evergreen traffic with content, increase SEO conversions, augment the branding.

Invest on Mobile

New devices and small screens hit the market each day. The focus of the modern marketer should be to generate leads on all known technologies. All those smart devices are connected, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is the next technology that will transform our daily regime. The Millennial generation uses intelligent devices, while Google recognizes a decent traffic ratio originating from mobile, mainly cellphones while tablets fall back. For example, when Nashville consumers walk or drive in downtown, they get ideas of what to visit, eat or shop on their screens. The recommendations originate either spontaneously from the system or triggered from the user when searching. Now online businesses will need to acclimate to the mobile environment to offer a better user experience in the small screens. Another technology just around the corner is Voice Search, where the virtual assistant gives feedback when the user asks something. Virtual assistants are Siri in Apple iPhones, iPad, and iPod touch, in Android there is Google Now, and in Windows phones there is Cortana. Cortana is also available for PC users with voice commands enabled. Shortly all the new technologies, IoT, Voice Search, and Artificial Intelligence will impact the state of search. How do you respond to the latest trends and how does your competition? Will you offer mobile-friendly pages and get a competitive advantage? Google for its part, has communicated that they will push the rankings for mobile-optimized and AMP pages.

How to rank in Nashville?

First, I will need to fix all the issues impacting your Nashville page performance and first-page rankings. Then we will need top-notch relevant and engaging content. To produce the material I need to research the niche, find good traffic sources and optimize for conversions. The overall goal is to make your Nashville page the leading player in the area, regarding traffic, content, branding, conversions, rankings, etc. Adding more digital channels like video marketing, social media, content marketing can boost further and deliver measurable growth that justifies the spending. So I will employ different marketing channels to expand the Nashville traffic, convert it to sales, or make visitors contact you, subscribe to the newsletter or interact and record it quantitatively.

Let me give some details about the additional marketing activities. I will also list your business in Google Maps, so when users browse the Nashville listings, they can find your page. Then, there is a search function taking place in YouTube, which presents another source of traffic when I optimize videos that target local (Nashville) competitive keywords and have them ranking at the top of the search stack. On top of Google Maps and YouTube search, I run branding campaigns on social media to increase brand awareness and consumer trust since consumers take up to seven views before making a decision. After all, brand mentions limit the competition placements.

What do you expect from my side?

I will need your feedback in outlining an SEO plan or add the SEO campaigns to your existing project. As each niche and website has its peculiarities, the budget, marketing actions, and targets will need to adjust to the SEO needs (local competition, landing pages). Any reports and traffic insights, i.e., visitors, conversions, channels, keywords, referrals, etc. Equally, I could grow any online property, i.e., your YouTube channel or a network profile. About the technical fixes, I will need to access your server or send instructions to your webmaster. Some social accounts would be useful to have before running the marketing campaigns with targeted content.

What will be the details of the marketing plan?

I run an SEO audit and keep track of the strengths and weaknesses of your page, content opportunities, marketing actions, traffic opportunities, projected performance, content calendar, SEO targets (MoM, YoY), and finally, the spending. My plan will include the specialties of Nashville, content needs, landing pages, engagement catalyst, performance metrics, expectations, and budget. I will focus on generating more clicks, optimizing the content, and boost conversions.

How do you use content SEO-wise?

In SEO we have only a couple of ways to generate clicks. Content is the core traffic method we use in search, and there is no way to replace it with backlinks or other means. Backlinks can boost the traffic or break the site depending on their placement within or around content. So, content is the catalyst for the compound that skyrockets our traffic. Backlinks will work fine if the material supports them (content originality, relevancy, length). I do not describe here the Article Marketing tactic because it is an old method that used to generate leads but has led to over-optimization and spam. It still presents an easy tool to agencies that need to automate content production and distribution, and here is where problems arise. When agencies produce content for article marketing (backlinks) purposes, we cannot say that is white-hat and will not flag the website as a spammer. Plus, the articles we distribute this way are not productive and do not expect ROI. Leaving behind the spammy tactics let us concentrate on targeted, optimized for conversions material that serves the business needs. It is no good producing articles that follow a universal, automated approach without taking into account the particular niche. If everyone has the same sources what good is that for competing? How can you outrank the competitors with the same tactics and sources? I keep my sources private and employ only those tactics that I deem fit for the content opportunities originating from my research. The advantage comes from differentiating the messages and making it engaging, standing out from the marketer stack. Top-notch content will become the evergreen traffic source with following benefits: i) Lead generation and Conversion maximization; ii) Powerful backlinking, iii) Brand awareness. Engaging content will generate more clicks. Google will appreciate the quality and information in website texts and position the pages as an authority within the niche (better ranking/more traffic). With a few optimized articles, you generate engagement (clicking, sharing, visiting, converting).

What are the main goals?

1) Expand the clicks originating from (natural) search. 2) Generate relevant traffic. 3) Lead the clicks to your optimized landing pages. 4) Understand how consumers click or not on your pages when running a query. 5) Research the content opportunities. 6) Produce engaging content. 7) Monitor and increase the conversions. 8) Engage consumers with the brand.

Should I be worried about the endless Updates?

You have nothing to worry about the Google changes. Google updates should not concern websites that do quality work and not engage in spamming. If your site is in this group, then you have a first-rate SEO consultant. If you question his methods, detect no progress, or you know that he engages in risky tactics, then you have every reason to worry. For my clients, I do everything to stay current with the updates and follow the Google guidelines. In the extreme case that Google has done a critical change and we need to adjust our approach I will send instructions to your webmaster ASAP. My work is White-hat so when an update is rolling out, I know that it will not break my client website, although there will be casualties in some of the competition who do dangerous stuff. I have an additional layer of security, a decision I took a long time ago to not outsourcing my SEO projects to off-shore/third-party providers. I made the decision when I realized that outsourcing to external providers is a nightmare. They fail in quality standards; you have no control over their work, you get lousy communication, and no responsibility when they damage your client. I am proud and confident of my work standards, never outsourcing and never transferring the risk to my client. All client work should be taken care in-house. There is one possibility when things are out of control, in the case of negative SEO. A competitor might want to harm my client rankings, so I offer an additional service of monitoring external risks (negative SEO).

What are the ways of payment?

The best option is a monthly retainer. Proved successful either with a single website, a group of sites, a Start-up, or an established brand. A brilliant way to start is a six months retainer, then check what we have accomplished, continue as before or expand. My experience tells me that a site with no prior issues could start growing from the 6th-9th week with some exceptions when I see rankings getting lovely positions right from the 3rd week. Of course with stable rankings, I see steady traffic and ROI.

Closing sentence

Hire me to boost your Google traffic. Even if you had something done before, the percentage you can claim from high rankings would definitely exceed any record. I could protect your business from the search spam SEO, adverse competitor tactics, and the massive outsourcing trend, which can deplete your budget. My point is why to pay high costs when you can get measurable growth without sacrificing. In short, you can expect traffic, top-notch content, targeted clicks, optimize conversions. Contact me below to find out more.